Annie! I called softly.
Without saying my name or any other word she hurried towards me, and we held each other for much longer than we ever had before. We were like survivors, finding each other after a disaster. Partly, she was telling me how much she sympathised about losing Jimmy. But she was also saying that this was not just a greeting, but a welcome home after half a lifetime. I didn't really know how to touch except as part of sex. With Nora, my greetings were bony, wary. But this once I was able to be natural. I held Annie as tightly as she held me. I know good. Annie is good.
Hi, sweetheart! I said nonchalantly.
Hi globe-trotter! she said. You look great in jeans. It's twenty since I got into a pair of jeans.
See your ears, Annie? I said. Models have operations to get ears that sit into their head like yours.
Then I saw that little Lilian in her convent uniform had slipped into the shop and was standing with her school bag in her hands, gazing up, rapt, at the two of us. She put down the bag and absently felt her own ears.
Don't forget to tell your daddy, Annie said to her, tha mammy has beautiful ears. Auntie Kathleen says so. Now - a cup of tea? Are you going out to the house to see Dan? He knows you might come today. Lilian does her homework here, and then we'll be out after you at around six.
Lilian was too shy to speak at first. She stood half hidden behind Annie - a plumper Annie than when last I'd seen her, and an Annie with grey hair instead of hair with a touch of grey. I did not want to speak myself. The little girl's hair sprang back from the perfect oval of her forehead in a certain way, which was exactly her father's way, which in turn was exactly the same as on our mother. I don't know how often in childhood I had looked at the way that curve of hair went back from Mammy's face and thought it was like what you'd see on a film star.
I'm your god-daughter, Lilian suddenly darted her head forward and said. I'm nearly nine.
Then she blushed and went back in behind her mother.
A couple of customers came into the shop.
Miss Lilian and I will go and get something nice to have with the cup of tea. Then I'll go out to your place to see Danny. Is that an okay plan? And will you show me what shop to go to? I said to the child.
She looked back at her mother, but she took my hand and led me out to the street. I stood there delighted at how little it had changed from when I was at school in the convent. It was a narrow street lined with small old shops that were the front rooms of houses, that you went into through street doors with knockers. They had curtained-off kitchens behind, and women ran out to serve the customers between feeding meals to their families. Traffic barely crawled along, and people strolled in and out between the cars.
Do you want to hear a joke? I said to Lil, because I could feel her tension. What did the bra say to the hat? Do you give up?
No answer. But she held my hand more firmly. I guided her across the street. The palm of my hand tingled with the detail of her - the satin of her hair, the knob of her shoulder, the shoulder blades like the beginnings of wings.
What did it say? she breathed.
What?
The bra to the hat?
Oh. You go on ahead and I'll give these two a lift. The old woman in the shop shuffled down behind the counter.
This is my auntie home from England! Lil announced. Her voice was suddenly strong and her tone proprietary.
The woman peered at us from between the sweet jars.
Sure I know that, she said to the child. I was having a good look at her, standing over there. I thought she was a stranger first but then I caught on.
She turned to me. Your mother was a handsome woman, too, of course, Lord have mercy on her.. . She used to come in here for a few sweets when she came into town to the library. I never saw the like of her smile.
Where is she now? Lilian interrupted.
She's flying around with the angels, the old woman said. You can't see her but she can see you. She's watching you to see are you a good girl.
She's a very good girl, Missus, I said. So could you let her pick out a few nice cakes there?
After our expedition, Lilian never stopped chattering, even when no one was listening to her.
I grew up four miles from Kilcrennan, where Shore Road ended at the sea. Halfway there, the road from the town went through a stand of beech trees. That's where the old place was, the family farm, where Uncle Ned had lived, and Danny and Annie and Lil lived now.
My feet in trainers made no noise on the soft earth of the lane. I walked up the hill between high thorn hedges, barely dabbed with colour where young leaves had begun to open out on the old briars. Celandine glowed dark yellow and glossy green in the ditch. The blackthorn was almost at the end of its foaming blossoming, but I could smell its sweetness still. At the bottom of the next field there was a stretch of the silver of a spring flood, and there were two swans on the water. The air was lively with the baa-ing of lambs, but Danny must have heard the car stopping a hundred yards away. He was leaning on the gate between the ramparts of evergreen hedge that hid the cottage, exactly as Uncle Ned used to lean. He had on a crumpled white shirt, and he'd combed back the hair that sprang from his high forehead. He had a round face dominated by my mother's eyes, limpid in him where they had been clouded in her. I wasn't shocked; I had become accustomed to the ghost of her that walked into the pub in London, when he met me for a drink the times he came over to soccer matches. His mouth had a downward curve but smiling completely transformed it.
You've a lot more hair than I thought you'd have, I said.
So have you, he said. You have more hair than most people.
Annie says she and Lil will be home round six.
No problem! I have the spuds peeled. My time's my own.
The place looks just the same!
It is the same. Annie is slave labour in that cleaner's and we've never had the money to change it.